A web browser application allows a user of a computing device to open multiple web pages simultaneously using multiple windows or tabs. If a user has multiple browser windows open, one or more of the open windows may be in the background view of the device display, rather than visibly been displayed in a foreground view. Despite being in the background view, these open windows still use computing resources of the device, since the browser application and its windows run as a single process on the device. In case the computer operating system of the device now requires additional computing resources, suspending background windows to free up resources would therefore require suspending the browser application and its foreground window. Thus, a monolithic browser application lacks the flexibility to adjust its demand on computing resources based on one or more of its background windows being inactive.